Is It Better to Have Loved and Lost Than Never to Have Loved at All?

Even if poetry is not your thing, you probably know by heart the words of Alfred Lord Tennyson:

'Tis better to have loved and lostThan never to have loved at all.

If you define love narrowly as romantic love, operationalized as marriage (though I surely don't), then Tennyson has been felled by science - the data show that it's just not true. In happiness, health, longevity, and just about everything else that has been studied (except maybe wealth), people who have always been single do better than people who were previously married (divorced or widowed).

As is often the case in marital status comparisons, the differences can be small. But they are quite consistently in the opposite direction than Tennyson would have led us to believe. (I provide a critical overview of the research in the science chapter of Singled Out. Karen Rook and Laura Zettel reviewed studies of physical health here.)

The question is why: Why do people who have always been single do better than people who are divorced or widowed?

Scholars of marriage have a ready response. It even has its own name, with three variations: the "stress" or "crisis" or "loss" hypothesis. People who have always been single have not experienced the same depth of stress (or crisis or loss) as people who have divorced or become widowed.

The explanation has an intuitive appeal, and charts of relevant data often seem consistent. For example, if you look at graphs of people's happiness over time, as they get married and then divorced or widowed, you can see happiness plunging as the year of the divorce approaches, or during the year of the partner's death, and then you can see it slowly start to rebound as the dissolution of the marriage recedes further into the past. (The graphs are on pages 38 and 39 of Singled Out.)

Studies of marital status take a fine-grained view of people who have gotten married. They separate out of that group the people who eventually divorce or become widowed. Then they find that the divorced and widowed people sometimes do worse than the currently-married people. (In other studies, married people are divided by the quality of their marriage, or their economic or class status, or any of a wide array of other variables.) Now consider what happens when people who have always been single are included in studies: This "never-married" group is one big undifferentiated blob. It is as if people who study marriage have an attitude of "they all look alike" when it comes to their views of single people.

My point is hardly earth-shattering but I have rarely seen it acknowledged in the scientific literature: People who have always been single also experience intense stress, acute crises, and devastating losses. If you were to ask single people about such experiences and plot the lifelines of their happiness the same way the lifelines of the once-married are typically plotted, I think you would see something similar. Single people also experience stress and sadness and grief when someone they love dies or when a profoundly important relationship falls apart (and it doesn't have to be a romantic relationship). You can't see it in the results of the published studies because the singles who have experienced great losses are not separated out the way divorced and widowed people are separated from the still-married.

There is something else important about the published literature on marital status. When people who have always been single fare better than some other group (such as the previously married), scholars rarely propose an explanation that assumes that single people may actually have some special skills and strengths.

Think of all the tasks that married people divide between them. The splits are a little less likely to be traditional than they once were (she takes care of the kids and the cooking, he pays the bills and mows the lawn), but they are often apportioned in some way. While the marriage lasts, this can be useful and efficient. When it is over, though, the newly uncoupled individuals are left with mastery of only those tasks that were once in their domain. Even memory is implicated, as when one person in the couple took charge of remembering the birthdays and the other kept track of the times for the oil changes.

People who have always been single, though, are likely to find some way of accomplishing all of the tasks of everyday life. Maybe they master some, tap a network of friends for others, and hire people to do the rest. One way or another, they get things done. I think that's a strength.

Maybe, too, the network is part of the answer. Perhaps people who have always been single maintain a more diversified relationship portfolio than the married people who invest all of their relationship capital into just one person. Maybe single people have friendships that have endured longer than many marriages. Maybe they attend to those friendships consistently, rather than stowing them on the back burner while focusing on The One. Maybe that's why they do better than people who were previously married.

I'm generating hypotheses. They could be wrong. What is important - and, I think, stunning - is that my suggestions are mostly new. Scholarly research on marriage dates back more than half a century. It has been supported by journals, conferences, degree programs, and piles and piles of funding. For all that, there have been hardly any scholars who have been able or willing to step outside the conventional ways of thinking and pursue the kinds of possibilities I'm suggesting here.

My argument is in the spirit of diversity. Just as there were many ways of thinking that never did get much notice when psychological (or medical) research focused mainly on men, or primarily on white people, or overwhelmingly on heterosexuals, so too has the absence of a singles perspective left us intellectually poorer. Fortunately, that is starting to change (here and here).

Finally, going back to the initial question that motivated this post (is it better to have loved and lost...): Of course, my point is not that we should steer clear of love. As I've said before in this space, I think we should embrace big, broad meanings of love. What we should steer clear of are narrow ways of thinking that leave us all locked in small, stifling ideological boxes.

I am in my early thirties and have been single until I met my Fiancee' last year. I am very happy and content with him, however, NOTHING replaces the single life. I don't know how, even after having all the happiness and so called fulfillment, I miss my taking care of myself and my higher self esteem and confidence, I think I ve become a bit comfortable after I ve gone into this relationship that there is someone to take care of me.
I liked myself better before :) , not that i don't like myself now, but clearly, to the world I am not epitomizing the smart single working girl taking care of eaach aspect of her life anymore, I have just become someone who's settling down at last and lost the race. I don't like the feeling even though I love teh person I m with.
Does that answer your question?:)

What makes you think you lost the race? You are still alive, so it's not over. It sounds like you think this is it, but it doesn't have to be. You can still grow and better yourself, whether it is financially or some other way. A good significant other would st and behind you and help push you to whatever goals you may have. Marriage doesn't mean you have to stop your life in its tracks.

In addition to my above reply, I also just want to say thank you for these posts. When I lived in my native state of Pennsylvania I was never challenged in any way about my single status. As soon as I moved to my current home in Texas, however, all that changed. Now I am constantly questioned and in some ways rebuked for being 27 and happily single. Your blog really helps me to soldier on with all of my single might.

I live in the suburbs 40 min north of Philly in a mostly conservative area where people are obsessed with marriage. But my sister lives in the city and people there seem just as obsessed. I was at a party in Harleysville (near Lansdale) last weekend and two people asked if I had a man in my life. I answered that I have more important goals right now. Why can't more of them ask about my job, which is my real life? I'm just 26 and do not see the point of adding a man to my life. People can't accept that I'm content. It's like my contentedness is a threat to their married status.

My sister just started dating someone and even though the guy wanted it to be "casual", he's taking up way too much of her time. She complained that she rarely has time for herself anymore. I told her to stand up to him and demand time for herself.

I am reminded of a study I read on general stress. The study took life events that may happen to people without specifically accounting for marital status. Events such as losing a job, having kids, moving, getting a promotion, ect.. were ranked in the order of reported stress ( good and bad) via a national survey. The number one negative stressor by far,was losing a spouse. I really do think this experience is untouchable by other life stressors that we all deal with. Single people may experience just as profound of a loss when it comes to a significant other ( not a spouse) but that's just a label discrepencey. The personal vestment the "single" person puts in to another person in order to relate to such a loss, makes them no more single than the person who legally declared thier love.

Also, for single people, the particular person who is closest to them may vary. So, for some, they may have a person who is like a spouse only without the marriage certificate; for others, it may be a lifelong friend, a sibling, or another relative. The study you just described is important, but by itself, it could not get at the point I just made. For example, neither sibling nor lifelong friend would come out as the number one stressor across people because for some, it would be the sibling, and for others, it would be the lifelong friend.

So maybe the question is, what is the level of stress experienced upon the death of the person you are closest to -- regardless of what category that person belongs in.

I think that you make a extremely important point with regards to diversity. The 'labels' and the constant questioning about whether people have a man or woman in their lives starts to become the bane of single people's social existence as they get older. I happen to be gay. I have an instant label - but now that sexuality is starting to be accepted by increasingly more people, I think that the 'single' label amongst my friends is becoming more socially unacceptable than the 'gay' label. Ironic. Society dictates far too much. The requirement to label everyone and everything is just another one it's dictations.

Your final sentence is going into my favourite sayings list; "What we should steer clear of are narrow ways of thinking that leave us all locked in small, stifling ideological boxes." I believe it can be applied across all areas of society... a general acceptance for the way people choose to lead their lives. Happiness is a way to travel through life, and not somewhere that can be reached!

Your observation about "single" now becoming a more unacceptable label than "gay" is very insightful. There was a similar trend with regard to divorce -- decades ago, to be a "divorcee" was shameful. Now it is ordinary. Still, people wonder about singles.

When I was researching my Singled Out book, I could not find much of anything on singles who are gay. Of course, there is too little research on just about everything having to do with singles, but still, it was striking.

Do you have demogrpahic data for people who have remained single over the long haul? I realize it's a small sample size, but the people I have known over the course of my life who have been remained single were fairly narcisistic... the same with the people who have CHOSEN to never have children.

I think if one were to look at the data for singles from this slant (that the people were simply narcisistic, and thus kept out anything which they didn't feel was favorable to them over the long haul), the numbers make sense.

To me, there also seems as though there is a financial factor involved... with singles being more in the exteme on either side - especially in regards to women where being able to take care of yourself financially, frees your mind to the idea that you do not need someone else. This was more than evident in both Southern California and Las Vegas, NV where I spent many years. Women in these areas were able to make a stable, reasonable income over the long-haul and thus chose their relationships or lack of relationships, based less on need and more on desire.

In using this quote as a mere "hook" on which to hang yet another exposition of the thesis which appears to be her life's work ("Bella DePaulo is author of Singled Out: How Singles Are Stereotyped, Stigmatized, and Ignored, and Still Live Happily Ever After"), BP does a grave disservice to the meaning of Tennyson's lines. In his sense, "better" does not equate merely to "doing better" in terms of quanta of longevity, morbidity, "happiness" etc. My objection is not to the "well-being" stats she wishes - yet again - to invoke, but to the spurious resort to literature to create a pseudo-argument.

Tennyson is talking about the moral, spiritual - and perhaps also social - value of selfless love and irrespective of whether it is platonic, requited, and totally irrespective of any of the protagonists' age, sex or marital status. (BP seems to be unaware that the lines she quotes so easily were nspired in this instance by the profound impact of the death of a beloved male student friend many years earlier.) I have loved, I have been (briefly)loved in impossible circumstances, I have been married and unloved, I have been single and unloved, single and loved......Above all, I have loved, and I know whereof Tennyson wrote. I may live no longer, nor "do better" - or worse - as a result of experiencing any of these states but, as Tennyson suggests, my inner life has been enriched by my own capacity to love, and to appreciate the qualities of another, regardless of the outcome. I plan to have "Better to have loved" as my epitaph. Please don't devalue other dimensions by using literary works so superficially - For some people, poetry is their "thing", and they take it seriously.

Do you have your own blog? If so, and you want to write more about Tennyson, including more lines from the poem and more background about it, I'd be happy to link to it. Just send me the link or post it here.

I agree that BP is completely wrong. I lost my daughter. She died. And i will take the love I knew, and felt, and experienced in that brief time, and not trade it for the world. This article is simply wrong. COmpletely, utterly, fantastically wrong.

And the fact that someone does better does not equate to depth or meaning. Simple happiness is not the goal in life. There is something about wisdom, growth and the ability to help and change others that cannot be measured by these nonsense studies of 'science'. Someone who has an utterly miserable life, living half of it in prison, for example, and then goes out and changes youth and helps others not make the same mistakes will fail the "happiness" test, but that person's life will have more MEANING and more POWER to change other lives, then some happy-go-lucky socialist living in Denmark who has free handouts, free health care, free everything, and helps no one.

People who don't know what love is do not appreciate what this means.
If you don't know love you can't appreciate it and love is a spiritual thing not an emotional fanciful thing either.
Love is gentle, easily entreated, full of tender mercy, suffereth long , vaunted not itself , is not puffed up and much much more than mere words can say..
God is Love and he that dwelleth in love, dwelleth in God.
There is no fear in love but perfect love casteth out fear, because fear hath torment.he that feareth is not made perfect in love.

I am 29 years old my late husband and I were together for 10 years before he passed away unexpectedly. We have 3 children. In time maybe I'll feel different but now, 5 months after his death, I don't know if its better to have loved and lost. The pain is so deep and so bad. If I had it to do all over again maybe I would have held back. Maybe I wouldn't have had any children. Maybe I would have made it a point to make sure that even though he was the man in my life we always had distance between us. Maybe I would have been more selfish and not worried if we were living in different places for long periods of time. Maybe that still would not have made a difference and it still would hurt just as bad. Who knows? I wouldn't want him to have gone away being half loved either. He left here knowing he had all of my love. Maybe anything less would have been selfish. It still hurts to be the one left behind. I want to be optimistic that I will be blessed to feel that same love again one day. To have another best friend in my life to share everything with. If it happens again I will be happy. I can't imagine growing old without it. At the same time I can't except half love myself either. Yeah it's confusing but love like life sucks sometimes and it is complicated.

I can't get into the intellectual or literary argument about what Tennyson was writing about (not that smart)...but I have learned from good and bad experience, that for me it is better to remain single (as in living alone not just marital status) and love a like-minded person...I am selfish, narcissistic, and don't like compromising on many things. I have family that love me and plenty of friends. We (homo sapiens) are not a monogamous species nor are we a homogeneous species. Some people are driven to be married, it's in their makeup, they can't think of living without someone, it's their means of fulfillment...and there are those of us who are very happy being single and feel lost, confined and claustrophobic in a traditional married relationship.

Is it better to have loved and lost, than to have never loved at all? The author seems to not realize, or account for, the sizable contingent of people - both single and married - who have fallen in love, but must still live with unrequited love every day, because the one who is loved can't, or won't, return the affection. And these are the lovers whom I feel this quote was meant for when written by Lord Tennyson.

This fails to consider certain aspects. For example: divorced people are different creatures than widowed people. Divorced people choose to separate themselves, which means that they had problems and weren't right for each other.

Also, this holds true for most single people who have never experienced love, but for those who have, never trying would make them live in a state of "what if," desire without being able to do anything about it, and an overall feeling of sadness.

My mother often quoted this quote in her 85 years of life.
Life is full of pain but her faith kept her loving till the end. She died 4 months ago and I miss her terribly. We had never been close until the last 10 years of her life. I was thinking if I had stayed distant to Mom and had not gotten close maybe I would not be grieving so. I remembered this quote that says I did the right thing. I took time to mend, to forgive, be forgiven, and enjoy my mom. Maybe wondered if some siblings are not suffering as much because they were not close to mom and dad. I don't think so. It truly is better to have loved and lost.

Love this article. You raise great points and questions about the merits of the single and how they have been neglected in psychology. Its hard to question assumptions, but what follows often leads to greater understanding.

Every time I hear that saying, I tend to think of people who loved and then REALLY lost, like the other person draining their bank account, cheating on them, abandoning them after (or even without) having children with them, or worst case scenario, being physically abused or even murdered by an intimate partner. In those cases, surely it would have been better have never loved that person at all.

Though we are designed to learn from our mistakes, remembering them is rarely enjoyable. Especially when they involve a close relationship. Lost love, heartbreak, and mating misfortunes powerfully impact our sense of self.